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Friday, 31 October 2014

With the Winter on its way and my Summer wardrobe going back into storage (sad face), my thoughts have turned to some new Autumn arrivals.

Even though this October has so far been the warmest Halloween on record, I have been slowly slipping into my winter favourites and spying a few new things to add onto my list. Most of these things being from my new favourite, Zara.

As I am off to Barcelona this November though, so I am trying to hold off buying too much so that I can have a bit of a shopping spree while I am there, without overloading my suitcase too much... (I'm not promising anything though, sorry mum).

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

I am a self confessed chicken when it comes to extreme sports or doing anything out of my comfort zone. But over the years I have thrown myself literally in the deep end and I'm not sure who I have scared more, myself or my mum?

To put this into perspective here, I am the kind of person
who would cry on a ferris wheel (who actually has cried on a ferris
wheel).

But at the age of 18 I decided that I was going to pack my bags, that University wasn't for me and that I was going to go see the world. Quite literally.

Before this trip, I had only ever been on family holidays in Europe, so the most extreme kind of sport that I had seen there was jumping on the back of a jet ski.

So travelling was some what of an eye opener for me. My third stop of seven (on my around the world ticket) was to New Zealand, the home of extreme sports and the first time I had ever thought about doing something 'extreme'.

I set off like most people to, on the beautiful green Kiwi Experience bus, with our driver Scotty. The first extreme sport I took part in here was mountain trekking on a horse. It was a hard ride and there were lots of opportunities to fall and at one point my horse even tried to throw me. But I did get this amazing photo...

The second adventure was black water rafting, which included abseiling, zip wires, jumping off ledges into complete darkness, tunneling and climbing up a waterfall.

My last extreme sport in New Zealand is a right of passage that I think every traveller has to do and it took me around three days to pluck up the courage to do it. Can you guess what it was?

That's me there in the red jump suit...

I've got less extreme as I've got older, unless getting in Tuk Tuk's, Rick shaws and travelling on night trains in India and Thailand count... but I still like to set myself the odd challenge, like Jungle Trekking and snorkeling with reef sharks in Thailand.

Monday, 20 October 2014

This weekend my mum and I decided it had been too long since we went
into London and had some fun. So that is exactly what we did on Saturday.

We didn't go too far, as you can see - not much further than the square mile, but we had a great time. We pulled into Liverpool Street on the train that afternoon and had a short walk along Bishopsgate to London Bridge where you get a fantastic view of The Tower of London, Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast. After taking a few snaps, we made our way to Borough Market where we tried to make a choice between all the amazing cakes and find something for our lunch.

The picture of the little girl's face above looking at the cakes will give you some idea of what I looked like when I was at the same stall...

There was so much going on while we were there it was so much fun and after finding those amazing brisket baps, we listened to the guys singing and playing outside the market then found something to wash our lunch and cakes down with.

We had a mini walk down towards St Paul's, where were took a quick tour around the old Clink prison - learning about the plague and why the Globe Theatre is the only building in London that is allowed to have a thatched roof.

Burning off all those calories, we then made our way down to see all of the poppies (on Borris Bikes) at the Tower of London. Seeing all of those poppies, each one representing a life lost was very overwhelming. But it is such a beautiful way to remember all of those men and women who lost their lives fighting during WWI.

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

It's been nearly two years since I went to India with one of my best friends Siobhan and I have been reminiscing looking at old photos this evening.

Thinking back to this amazing journey has made me realise that I have never written about it on my blog and there are so many funny, amazing and brilliant stories to tell from this trip. So many that I'm not sure I will fit them all into one blog post.

If I am honest, we spent a lot of our time looking at different temples and palace's. Talking to people about the culture in India, their beliefs and the subject of arranged marriages. I think both Siobhan and myself have a natural curiosity about the culture in India and we made friends with a lot of the people in the hotels that we were staying in, so we asked them what their opinions on the tradition was.

There was a mixed response and a rather romantic notion attached to everyone's opinion and I think there is definitely a generation gap when it comes to agreeing or disagreeing with the idea of your parents arranging your marriage.

We were rather luckily invited to a wedding while were were there too. The wedding was an arranged marriage and of Muslim belief, which meant that the lady getting married wasn't in attendance to the actual celebration.

Here are some of the photos from that day...

How beautiful are the ladies dresses and sari's? We loved them so much we both came home with more than one each... But they are so inexpensive and the three that I purchased only cost me £2 each.

We attended this wedding in Agra, where we were visiting on route to the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is the first wonder of the world I have ever seen and I was stupidly excited to go and see it for the day.

Here are our pictures from the day that we spent there...

Most of my photos on this trip were taken on an old SLR camera that I had from college. Which is why they aren't the same high resolution images that you would normally see in my blog posts, however, I love the quality that it gave to the photos.

When we uploaded the pictures to Facebook, Instagram, etc... on the day that the photos were taken, we had lots of comments about it looking as though we were actually sat in front of a painting. Which looking back on now, this is exactly what it looks like. However, I can promise you that we were there :)

Anyway, I realise I have been rambling for a long time now, so I will leave you here. I plan to pop up and itinerary some time over the next week, along with some tips for India - so if you have any questions then just pop them below and I will incorporate them within my next post for you.